an introduction to the love epochal

my poetry is about process, as much as it is a poem. i think of the love epochal as one long poem that i hope will never end. maybe someone can pick it up from me at some point. pass on the responsibility until the robots replace us.

it is just a series of random poetic thoughts i have. or overhear. a lot of business jargon finds its way in. little bits of gossip about random people. lots of thoughts in the bath about philosophy. but ultimately it’s a sort of diary of the life a fictional, autistic poet who is trying to approach the world with unconditional love but can’t help hating fascists while also being busy and overwhelmed generally by the day to day experience of life.

i edit the poem and post it pretty much one year to the day after each bit was written. the editing is a dialectical struggle between coherence and adherence to the linearity of thought. at first, i just put it more or less in the order it was written and just edited for rhythm and rhyme.

after performing a few times, i started aiming more for coherence, re-ordering to try and link the thoughts into a series of almost self contained little poems. but you can’t herd poets so generally i fluctuate between these two poles never fully committing either way. perhaps to the project’s detriment. who knows. i’m just an artist. i don’t have to make sense.

i also write little blog posts inspired by the day’s poetry. and i sometimes make spoken word versions of bits from the poem, and videos, and these things can be found on spotify, youtube, apple music, all those things. and that’s what the love epochal is.

obligation iii.

overwhelmed by the burden

of reciprocalgenerosity

a pang, an anxious smell,

the sense of what childhood felt like

tiramisu, creamy goo,

live laugh love

like death from above

trigger habit, sunny meditation,

why did i feel

so undeserving of love

get a kingfisher peacenik

from a funky beatnik

a bus comes to pilot us back

fifty times bigger than we needed

happy valentine’s day. i hope it wasn’t alienating for you. i hope you have romantic love in your life, if you want it. but more important are the other loves. self-love. love of your fellow humans. love of the animal kingdom and the plants that nourish us. love of the sun and the stars and of the weird place that the universe is.

growing up autistic is confusing and traumatic. being loved is difficult when you have low self worth. but everyone deserves love. every human, every plant, every creature, has intrinsic value.

roll, again

we roll again

through cold thick cream

a runner for four seasons

i believe in

the beauty and

the romance of numbers

fact patterns:

four ones, nine nine nine,

four eights

i can’t help but add

together spectral sums

earlier in the year i wrote of coincidental couples day – we only live in relation to each other. for any two people, whose lives overlap, there will be a day when one is twice the age of the other. i like to celebrate the anniversary of that day with my partner – it was 11.1.1999. four ones and three nines. it was meant to be.

ending

@poet’s corner 10 dec 2025

fellow poets, the end is nigh.

this is called, the hoarse foreman of the apocalypse

life under actually existing capitalism continues;

a unique combination of boring and stressful

the yoga word lost to an armed counter revolution

be mindful, namaste,

despite the flames, be restful

the firewater fades to a numb, dumb dysphoria

as we tag along

behind the hoarse foreman of the apocalypse

on foot due to cutbacks

i think about time a lot, the hopeless impossibility of the past, its unchanging nature, its doubtful provenance. but do facts remain or do they change over time? the despots of the past become sanitised by history. they become great men. nearly always men anyway.

but we don’t need great leaders. we need stability, peace, equality, food, shelter and entertainment. we need good company.

this is called

endless time

how would you feel

if everything happened forever

if every moment of your life was still ongoing

everything always in total contradiction

i want the unexpected

off script, dumbfound me

astonish me quick

with your attention to retail

when they finish the history books we’ll see

we just have to just accept the past

it happened

i was once diagnosed with a terminal illness. that was the start of my midlife crisis. i was then completely undiagnosed on my 39th birthday. a misread x-ray was all it was. i went to decathlon and listened to madonna.

i remember the days after diagnosis. feeling so heavy. feeling like i could forget to breathe. this is called

lonely consequence

maybe we can choose

our consequences

and gain energy as the

days accumulate

have i mentioned my inability to visualise the future?

scared, listless,

unreadily forced to bear witness

a dusken golden moment lighted

a sudden recognition;

that leaden feeling

when they tell you are going to die

is loneliness,

as much of it as you can have.

inconclusive, in conclusion

anyway, that was yesterday,

with that we close the chapter

for now the winter sun flits

over scarecrows, toclips and frosty nips

and it all begins to feel conclusive

but then the things as usual

start to get ambiguous

and once again of the good souls

we must ask forgiveness

and one last thing. this is the last chorus of the first year of my epic, ongoing, poem, the love epochal.

the redemptive final chorus

o wean in a manger,

your chocolate trough

it’s a preposterous amount but

somehow never enough

i have a theory

that love is pain

different but the same

the redemptive final chorus

o wean in a manger,

your chocolate trough

it’s a preposterous amount but

somehow never enough

i have a theory

that love is pain

different but the same

if there is one thing i have learned, it is that love is pain. love will always hurt. you have so much tied up in it. but it is worth it because a life without it is devoid of the highs and lows that are emblematic of the life poetic.

now is the time

i’m a basic bitch consumer

i just wanna be humoured

eat this pish

it’s a fancy foreign dish

while i appreciate expertise

i’m keener to fetishise

passionate begginerism

call for a strong and stable new era

are the good souls ready

to forget forgiveness

and embrace the love

that burns old epochs down?

dear reader: we embraced the love. it was a shame to burn the old epochs down. but one must live now, in the present. it’s the only show playing.

and aside from one final chorus, this is the end of part two of the love epochal. and it’s a happy ending! please join me in part 3, giletdonism, in which i start a new job, embark on a career as a poet and writer, and embrace gilets in my casual wardrobe.

christas traditions

a message from a fond reunion,

hidden in a bottle

overdrafting on my sidling savings

a big bright banging badhead

brings a boozeless bath

often when alone i think,

“this is exactly what an insane person would do”

and that means i am sane

i feel the agony of love

and recall that the future never happens

consequential couples day was covered in stanza 5 of the love epochal, published may 2025. i will quote as it explains it quite nicely:

every coincidental couple share or will share a day

(assuming all live lives that lap over and aside)

when one is either twice or half as old as their partner.

we only live in relation to each other:

brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, children we are all

anyway, the day that my love and i share is 11/1/1999. 1111 999. it’s a message from the universe. i don’t believe in soulmates. but some people do make a lot of sense for each other.

and the future does never happen: it appears that we are eternally doomed to live now, in the present.

inconclusive, in conclusion

anyway, that was yesterday,

with that we close the chapter

for now the winter sun flits

over scarecrows, toclips and frosty nips

and it all begins to feel conclusive

but then the things as usual

start to get ambiguous

and once again of the good souls

we must ask forgiveness

my on and off girlfriend and i were finally turning the dial fully to off. we were taking active steps to move on. it seemed like that was what we were going to do. i decided i would focus more on my housework and compiling my personal archive. play more melodica. but as usual. the temptation to check in arose. on both sides. and we weren’t sure of our relationship again.

embiggened by a little soul

be lovers on standby,

not friends with benefits

celeste’s carnation

in the barrel, in the gun

chuck your moveables in

for a risk-free freebie

even a little soul

embiggens the forgiven

it was the lost weekend. my lover and i were on a break. considering our options. but i knew fine what i wanted. then celeste caeiro died and i wanted to commemorate her. she was a portuguese communist who was working as a waitress in 1974 when the fascist regime was overthrown by mutinous soldiers. she placed carnations in the soldiers’ rifles, and this became the visual motif of the revolution.

embiggened is, of course, a simpsons reference.

stressa, italia

the train stretches and yawns to a peripatetic merry go round
down a wonky corridor
arguing inarticulately; things we can’t control
an azure mountain panorama and delicate fish
blue moments punctuating the trattorian cycle
even the trees are blue
bodily warmth, the wind sliced small by my forearms
above the alps i contemplate my mirror world souls
i wonder how they’d feel, those me’s i could have been
torrents of nostalgia may bombard us
pain may tattoo our love
despite tourettic itches and compulsions
it would be good to be good for the sake of being good
but i recall us mortals are careless and forgetful
good souls will forgive one and all

from napoli we headed north by train to stressa, by lake maggiore. i like writing poetry on holiday. i try to document the novel experiences. i liked the calm and peace of the lakes. one day we walked up a steep hill for lunch at a restaurant with a view over the lake. we had no reservation, and they sat us in the sun on the edge of the courtyard. but then a manager asked if we would like to move to a table with a better view. we drank the house red wine – i think it was 12 euro for a carafe, and it was very nice.

i was reading doppelgänger by naomi klein at the time. a fascinating book. in it, klein immersed herself in the world of the alt-right ‘mirror world’ – trump, bannon, and their fellow travellers. it was this book that sort of pushed me into getting a formal autism diagnosis, after reading her reflections on the difficulties presented by her son’s autism.

i was thinking a lot about change. i’d been through a lot in the year or so leading up to that holiday. and so much more change was to come. a year on, life still feels a bit unsettled. but i walk on steadier ground, trying hard not to take anything for granted. trying to live a life of love, and generous understanding. but still a bit grumpy and normally complaining. life is hard.